Quote Originally Posted by Jandor View Post
You are explicitly told in Amaurot that you have zero capacity to do creation magic. It's also established that anyone, even the WoL, could perform a summoning if they really wanted to.

It follows therefore, that summoning is not the same as creation magic. Might be very loosely related, but it doesn't have the same requirements and it doesn't get the same results.
I'm pretty sure summoning magic IS meant to be related to Creation magic. While we're told in Amaraut that we don't have the capacity for Creation magic, the one telling us that bases the judgment on the fact that our internal aether reserves are alarmingly weak. But the thing about Summoning, is that the summoners use an EXTERNAL reserve of Aether - crystals, and lots of them. It likely wouldn't even occur to an Ancient to Create in this way. I mean, why bother, when you have internal Aether to spare?

Examples like the final dungeon boss of Akadaemia Anyder and the mention of Ifrita from the side stories seem deliberately placed to indicate "this is how Summoning got started". Not to mention, the whole deal with Zodiark and Hydaelyn. Emet-Selch flat-out states that they are Primals. There's some indication that those, along with Quetzalcoatl were EXPERIMENTAL Creation magic, since their summoning involved complete depletion of an entity's Aether (one person's Aether for Quetz, millions or billions for Zodiark, and an unknown number for Hydaelyn), something which was likely unheard of before times became as desperate as they were.

Unless told otherwise, though, I think it's safe to assume that Summoning is basically Creation magic with an external Aether source, since the summoners lack the internal reserves to do true Creation magic.